Installation

The new MSI motherboard is much smaller than my old Asus. As a result, sacrifices had to made in terms of board layout. The first roadblock I hit was that the SATA ports were situated right under the video card slot. Since I have a double-slotted GTS 450 the ports are effectively blocked off. Luckily I have two right-angled cables. However, due to the orientation of the ports, I can't connect more than two devices. This is unfortunate as I have two hard drives and a DVD drive (not connected).

A small annoyance is the case fan header. On my old board it was located on the left side of the motherboard. This worked perfectly for me because I connected the rear exhaust case fan. On the new board the fan connector is on the right side, making cable management more difficult.